#ScribesAndMakers November 5: There was a snake in the road...

I stopped and asked the snake if he was trying to hitch a ride.

"Yesssh. Thanksss for sssstoping. I don't have thumbbsss and sssso many people have driven around me. My name'ssss Gerald."

"Hop in, Gerald," I opened the passenger door.

Gerald slid in.

"Seatbelt," I said.

"Sssure," Gerald said. He buckled himself in.

"Where to?"

"Anywhere but here," Gerald said with venom.

"Anywhere?"

Gerald nodded.

I pulled the fake face on my CD player and pressed a button. The planet with all its roads and buildings and trees and cities and oceans disappeared around us, replaced by stars. I dialed in a course for a nearby star system and configured my vehicle for maximum speed. I pressed the big red button and stars streaked around us.

"Music?" I said.

"Yesssh, I could do ssssome musssic."

#FlashFiction #TootFic

I'd heard from others how much the new Youtube interface for mobile phones suck. I happily took their word for it. Unfortunately, I now have it too.

There was no golden age where app designers were following UX best practice but golly, gee, gosh, have things gone to shit in 2026.

#Youtube #UX #technology #JBTechPost

#ScribesAndMakers October 25: What's something you accomplished this past week?

I finished writing the John Doe short story I'm working on for Halloween. I also finished the editing and uploaded audio recordings of Transformation by Mary Shelly and The Flayed Hand by Guy De Maupassant.

#ScribesAndMakers October 23: Our next featured creator enjoys hiking. Do you enjoy being outdoors, and if so, does it have an impact on your creativity?

Mostly. When I was growing up, two of the neighborhoods I lived in were right up against woods and I spent hours every week traipsing through them. On the other hand, I have whatever it is that draws mosquitoes in droves.

Time spent in the woods impacts the imagery I write about in stories like the John Doe series.

#ScribesAndMakers 18. Link to or summarize yesterday's poll and reveal which word was yours. Did a majority agree it was the best fit?

Alas, there was some kind of glitch on my instance and none of the results were recorded. I’ve run into this issue before but thought I’d just gotten no responses. This time I know I did. ​:meong_sus:​

The draft sentence has “debris” in the blank.

#WordWeavers October 17: What is the worst possible first impression someone could get of your MC?

They'd probably get the idea that John Doe has an interest in entomology.

Would it be accurate?

#ScribesAndMakers October 17: Create a sentence (or use one you've already written) and share it with one word omitted. Create a poll listing your word along with 2-3 synonyms. Ask people to choose which word they think is the best fit.

I woke in a pile of (blank), looking up at faint light from a hole in the uneven roof of the place where I was.

#ScribesAndMakers October 9: Our next featured creator is a 'relentless optimist.' How full is your glass?

My glass is measured and described with great precision using the metric system and highly sensitive tools.

(I've been called negative by optimists and overly positive by pessimists.)

I'm going to try to stop for the day. I'm tempted to turn subsets of this into like ... emoji shirts and wrapping paper or whatever. I need to rework ... probably most of these but I'm still liking how this is going.

#PixelArt

I got a bit inspired. Started work on a 16x16 emoji set. One of the first emoji I did was the eggplant because I wasn't sure it would work in 16x16. It still needs work. Its presence is why this is marked sensitive.

#PixelArt

I ran into a case where having a reasonably licensed emoji set would have been advantageous. The one I ran into had a CC BY-NC-ND or something to that effect which kind of renders it not very usable for an indie writer / artist.

Spent a few minutes looking into options today. OpemMoji is on a CC BY-SA 4.0 license which seems usable for my purposes.

The cat subset is quite cute too.

#ScribesAndMakers October 6: On a scale of 0-100, how much conflict (however you personally define it) is necessary for a compelling story?

There's a concept that's common in western fiction where protagonists have to be working toward a goal. It's not universal even in that context but you can see it in things like Dan Harmon's Story Circle. I think this tends to prejudice stories toward certain kinds of characters and certain types of stories.

In general, I think a story needs something to overcome ... or fail to overcome.

Putting it on a number line? Like ... 20? I think it generally needs to be there in some amount. I'm really open minded about conflict levels as low as 0, though.

NOTE: In case it's not clear, I'm not endorsing Harmon in any capacity. Ignoring everything else (which you can find by scrolling down slightly from the link above), I think adhering to the Story Circle leads to shallow character writing.

#Writing #StoryCircle

I won’t be making my I Read My Fanfiction At Night parody cover of I Wear My Sunglasses At Night. The probable shenanigans involved in doing parody covers as an indie creator are huge. Just know it’s a thing that should exist.

#ScribesAndMakers October 5: Excluding unfinished work, what's the longest it has taken you to complete a project?

Thimble Tall, Short As Sky began long enough ago that I don't actually know when I got started on it. When Trump won in 2016, I realized I needed to write it. Work got in the way. Then Trump won again in 2024 and I've been working on it off and on ever since. (Though the draft is finished, it's in edits right now.)

If I only count my first attempt to actually put words on page, just shy of a decade. ​:meong_laughing2:​

#WordWeavers October 3: Share a line from your WIP that foreshadows something important without giving it away.

From the John Doe Is Not Alone short I'm working on for release this month:

I may be strange but, so far, it seems I'm only as strange as the world I've found myself in.

#ScribesAndMakers September 28: How satisfied are you with the creative work you've done this month?

Reasonably so. I wish I'd recorded more videos and I wish I'd finished my second pass edit on Thimble Tall, Short As Sky. On the other hand, I got at least two public domain horror / gothic stories recorded (one of which is fully edited) and I've made progress on a John Doe Is Not Alone side story. And a bunch of other stuff.

#WordWeavers September 28: Tell us about your MC’s religious or spiritual beliefs.

John Doe is aware that a lot of people have those. That awareness plays a bit of a role in By Fire's Light but more in what it allows him to realize isn't necessarily weird about a town.

I would be surprised if it ever went much further for him than that.

#WordWeavers September 27: What interesting quirks do your characters have?

I'm not entirely sure I have a clear handle on what others would perceive as quirk. For John Doe (of John Doe Is Not Alone / By Fire's Light), John is not a normal human and his perspective on humanity and human-adjacent things is colored by his unique perspective (or lack thereof) of "normal" humanity.

#ScribesAndMakers September 25: Our next featured creator uses a separate Fedi account dedicated to their book. Do you use different accounts for different creative purposes?

Noooo. I might be a little less annoying if I did. ​:meong_laughing2:​

#ScribesAndMakers September 22: Promotion day. Self or someone else. Or both.

For published fiction you can buy right now, I have Death In Transit and New Names, Old Crimes, the first two stories in the Vay Ideal series. I have a novel which is written but not published yet. Keep an eye out for that.

I do Youtube shorts on a variety of topics like flash fiction, things you can bake in an air fryer (pizza and bagels), things I wish I could tell my cats, and comedy (the app they won't let me have, what if corn was advertised like cars).

#Writing #AmWriting #AmEditing